It never fails. Every day I get at least one message or email from someone who asks me if I know a good salesperson that needs a job. I send the exact same reply to all of them. “If I knew a good salesman who wanted a job, I’d hire him” and I’m dead serious. Good salespeople are hard to find. Here’s why – someone is paying them what they are worth!

A lot of people think they are good at sales, but the truth is, your paycheck determines whether you’re a good salesman or not.

Sales is about one thing and one thing only. Making money. None of us are in this game for the thrill of it. We deal with turndowns, hang ups, slammed doors every day in order to get paid. Nothing more nothing less. Those of us that have found our way, are almost always unhireable. 

That being said, most of us have to settle with hiring someone who’s more “okay” at sales than “good”. Then it’s our job to train them into a “good” salesman. Which after years and decades of doing this can be exhausting. Especially since most of us train people who then go on to become a competitor in one form or another. 

For the last 5 years I’ve ran a lifestyle business that didn’t require a sales team but late last year I realized I was being selfish and playing small. I had hired and trained mortgage teams before but honestly, it was a pain in my ass. I’ve got the patience of a toddler and the mouth of someone with tourettes so I usually just fire people and do it myself. 

I had an incident in my life where an attorney had to evaluate my business. When he got back to me he told me it was not a business it was just me hustling and if I got sick, hurt or killed then the business was worthless. He suggested I create a salesforce to push my digital products. As much as I didn’t want to hire and train a salesforce, I knew I was going to have to. 

So I got to work on recruiting and training a sales team

Last fall, I started hiring salespeople. I put the word on the street that I was looking for good sales people and all sorts of folks showed up. Hungry, ready, eager to make big money, sales folks showed up. Sadly, none of the original line up is even around now, which is just a few months later. I hired and fired around 10 sales people in a very short period of time. In that same time period, I found a solid crew who seems to be performing happily and growing my business with me. 

I created this team with minimal amounts of my time invested. As an entrepreneur with multiple businesses to run and 100s of clients to help, I have to make sure to use my time in the absolute best way possible. What I did allowed me to not only train a group who’s closing around $40,000 in commissioned sales each month and I spend less than two hours a week training and helping them. 

I use a conference call service and I have my sales team call in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9am Texas time. The calls are usually 5-20 mins long. These calls serve two purposes. Purpose one is to micro-train them in small segments to avoid overwhelm. Purpose two is to keep them motivated. Motivation is something that expires quickly. I bring the heat 3 days each week.

I also lead the team from the front lines making calls and closing sales myself every day

By leading the team from the front lines, the see what can be done, and aspire to do the same. I’m not some lame duck manager, who hasn’t closed a sale in years, yelling at my crew about why they can’t close shit. I’m out here, showing them how it’s done on a daily basis. The team knows I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I’m not already doing myself. 

I use these conference calls to talk about my vision, what I’m personally doing that works, and drilling the same word tracts in their heads over and over again. I also use these calls to constantly up the pace. I’m all about growing and expanding, so I make sure I keep that vision congruent on my team too. I want the to do more, close more and have more each and every month. There is no “we made it!” point, we always want more.

Another key component to me being able to train my team without taking all my time, has been from recording everything. I’ve recorded every sales training call, every webinar I’ve done and every question I’e been asked. I have a FAQ type of page that has everything my team needs.  Before they come to me, they know to go to that program page and get the info there. 

They buy and implement my Show Up and Close sales training program

Also, since I have sales training programs, I made each of the salespeople buy my Show Up and Close sales training program and implement what they learn. They are selling the exact same thing they’ve bought, and believe in. They also know exactly what the client will be getting, the process and all. This makes them a question and objection handling animal after about 60 days. 

Here’s a blatant but worth sales pitch: If you’re a business owner or manager, you should by my sales training programs for your sales staff. This keeps you from having to train them too extensively. They learn your products and services, paid with my word tracts and they won’t be asking YOU questions, they’ll be asking the prospects questions, like a good salesman’s supposed to do. Increase your sales, get your team’s hands on my program at www.buyshowupandclose.com

The team also has a group chat which I created and at this point they all answer each other’s questions. They self rely on the FAQ page or the chat BEFORE they reach out to me. I’ve set the expectation for them to respect my time. They will ask each other via the group chat before they reach out to me or my operations manager. 9 times out of 10 one person on the team knows the answer and helps. 

Training a good sales team doesn’t have to take all your time and energy. I think it all starts with getting clear on who can stay around. I’ve given a chance to a lot of people to be on the team, I make cuts like a pro ball team in pre-season. Anyone can talk the talk, but I only need to see a few steps to see how the walk. You can use cheap and free technology to save you time and money. 

If you’re trying to grow your sales force but struggling to pull it all together I can help you put systems in place that will make your job and your life much easier. If you’re looking for someone who can be the “been there done that” voice in your head, guiding you down the correct path, simply fill out the form below and let’s talk about me helping you.